


What Aristophanes Wrote About Love and Wholeness

by queer_cheer



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Faeries - Freeform, Fantasy and Magic, Human!Aziraphale, Human!Crowley, Hurt/Comfort, Pining, Romance, and of course a lil bit of comedy because it IS good omens after all, aziraphale's love language is just different than his that's all!, crowley has 6000 years of emotional baggage and self-doubt, faerie circles, mild homophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-07-26 00:48:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20035090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queer_cheer/pseuds/queer_cheer
Summary: In which two supernatural entities — one etherial and one occult — had never been told to be careful what they wish for.Crowley never would've made the stupid wish if he'd known that the moor had ears and eyes and a penchant for making trouble. But he had wished, and now, he and Aziraphale are perfectly ordinary human beings. It might not've been so bad if, on top of it all, someone wasn't trying their very hardest to kill them dead.





	1. The Origin of Love

**Author's Note:**

> I've finally jumped on the bandwagon to write some fun (and probably very campy) Good Omens fic. I have absolutely no idea where I'm going with this, so buckle up, I guess? Enjoy x

The weeks that immediately followed Armageddon were, for all intents and purposes, very normal. It was a very normal 15 degrees, and as a very normal greyness gathered over the streets of London and a very normal rain began to patter down, a very normal sort-of demon and his very normal sort-of angel were nearing a very normal 190 kph in a very normal car that was only a little bit stolen. Behind them, very normal police sirens lit up a very normal blue.

But this is not where our story begins. It begins two days earlier — two weeks after the thwarting of the end of the world — in a pretty little grotto somewhere just north of the kind of place where stories _usually_ start.

***

“It’s nice,” said Aziraphale, sucking in a deep breath of fresh air. He’d always loved the outdoors. There was nothing quite like the crisp bite of an autumn morning, when dewdrops still gleamed on blades of grass and the sun, still low enough in the sky, cast a thin golden veil over all God’s creation. It was romantic, he thought, in every sense of the word.

“You’ve seen one tree, you’ve seen them all,” Crowley griped. Clearly, he’d disagree. He was neither a morning person nor a rugged outdoorsman. He was, however, an Aziraphale person, and if hiking to the edge of the world was what it took to make the angel happy, he’d do it ten times over. Love was stupid like that.

He nearly tripped over a log, coming close to spilling the contents of the wickerwork basket he’d (foolishly) been trusted to handle. (He and picnic baskets didn’t have the best track record, after all. Last time he'd handled one, it was almost, literally, the end of the world.)

“Why couldn’t we just go for a picnic in Hyde Park like everybody else?” 

“Oh no, it isn’t a proper picnic if you can still hear the sounds of traffic,” Aziraphale paused at the sight of a fallen tree and, after a moment’s thought, snapped his fingers. With a low rumble and series of groans and creaks, the tree stood itself upright and rerooted into the dampened ground. It’s barren branches sprouted shoots of lush, green leaves. Patches of fungus withered up and vanished. Aziraphale beamed.

“That’s better, isn’t it?” 

Crowley gawked at the tree, and then at Aziraphale. He suddenly began to wonder if his own plants had been growing so well lately because they’d finally gotten the message after he disposed of Phil the Fern, or because of certain external, ethereal forces. 

“You know,” He jogged to keep up with Aziraphale’s gait. “Heaven’s going to get on you about all these little miracles.” 

Aziraphale gave him a dismissive wave. 

“Heaven has been leaving well enough alone, my dear.” 

Crowley shrugged. With their respective head offices out of their hair, they’d been enjoying themselves and, more specifically, each other. To Crowley, it felt like an invisible, long-standing barrier had been turned abruptly to dust. Aziraphale’s doubts about goodness and divinity and separate sides had been eliminated, and for the first time in 6,000 years, he didn’t seem worried about the consequences their companionship might stir up. (Crowley had stopped worrying sometime after the fall of the Roman Empire, when he’d decided he’d rather face all the nastiest beasts of Hell than the prospect of an eternity without a certain golden-haired goody-two-shoes.)

It was almost perfect. Almost, Crowley thought, because eventually, he knew something was bound to happen. Heaven would get over itself, and, burdened with forgiveness and virtue and all that other holier-than-thou crap, they’d be on their knees apologising in no time. And Aziraphale, being the kind of person that necromanced dead trees back to life and went for cute little picnics in the heart of the English countryside, might just be soft enough to accept their stupid sorries.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale called out from a few steps ahead. “Are you listening?” 

“Yeah, of course,” Crowley quickly recovered. He might as well enjoy their escapades while they lasted. 

“Good! We’re nearly there!” 

The path had all but vanished, leaving a pitted, narrow trail rife with overgrown foliage and a good bit of trash. Crowley might’ve been a demon, but even so, he hated trash in places it shouldn’t be. Hell was dirty enough. If he wanted gross, he would’ve just stayed down there. 

After surveying the area to make sure no one — not even Aziraphale — was watching, he flicked his wrist, and the emptied water bottles and packets of crisps were gone. In their place were fluffy little animals munching on acorns and weeds.

“Remind me again where we’re going?” He called after Aziraphale. “Feels like we’re going to walk off the face of the Earth any minute now.” The trip had taken a sudden incline upward, and the rocks underfoot were slick with last night’s rain. It was really only a matter of time until Crowley fell flat on his face. 

“Almost there!” Aziraphale repeated. “I used to come out this way ages ago.” 

“You did?” 

Aziraphale made a vague noise of confirmation. 

“I had to busy myself by doing something while you were off sleeping through the bulk of the 1800’s,” He teased.

Crowley choked back a laugh. He had been under the impression that the something Aziraphale had busied himself doing had been named Oscar Wilde.

“Here it is,” Aziraphale came to a stop at the top of the hill, peering out through a clearing in the trees with a smile that made the whole blasted trip worth it. The sun reflected off of his cheekbones and brought out a twinkle in his eyes. Crowley, joining him on the lip of the mountain, was so transfixed by Aziraphale’s innocent glee that he almost forgot he was meant to be looking off at something else.

“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” 

Crowley hadn’t taken his eyes off of Aziraphale.

“Yeah,” He said gently, almost to himself. “It is.” 

Beyond the hillside, there were rolling fields of tall, yellow grass dotted with sporadic shoots of wild lavender. A wooden fence stretched across a distant valley, encased on all sides by trees boasting the colors of autumn. Speckled little deer nested in the dale below, and if Crowley really squinted, he could see the palest silhouette of London’s city skyline sitting pretty on the far-off horizon. 

It was such a breathtaking view that neither Aziraphale nor Crowley noticed that there was something rather strange about the moor. (Aziraphale was too busy thinking about how nice it was going to be to eat his packed breakfast of chocolate chip biscuits and cups of fruit, and Crowley was wondering if this would be the point in a film where someone ought to be doing some kissing. He wasn’t actually sure if people ever really kissed in real life, but if they did, he could hardly think of a better place.)

But the moor was watching them and listening in; it was polymorphic and thoughtful and bored. They’d stepped over rings of mushrooms, and at one point, Crowley had stepped backwards into one. Demons weren’t superstitious, but if they had been, he would’ve known that he’d awakened something better left to its sleep. 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley began, sounding thoughtful. 

“Hm?” Aziraphale turned to him with a grin. Maybe it was the soft, dewy light of morning that had Crowley feeling sentimental, or maybe it was the way Aziraphale hadn’t stopped smiling since he’d suggested they finally go for that picnic they’ve been planning since the 1960s, but either way, he cleared his throat. 

“Do you ever think about what it would be like if things were different?” 

Aziraphale cocked his head to the side. “Well, I suppose so. Different how, exactly?” 

Crowley sat down and opened the picnic basket. He’d packed a canned coffee, which might’ve been the best invention clever, beautiful humans had thought up. He cracked it open to buy himself some thinking time. 

“I don’t know. I mean, just different. If you weren’t you and I wasn’t me.” 

Aziraphale sat down beside Crowley and pulled out some biscuits. He’d grown suddenly quite pensive.

“Who else would we be?” 

“Not so much who,” Crowley was starting to worry he was sounding silly. “More of a what, really.” 

What he was trying to say, was that he’d never much minded being a demon until he met Aziraphale, and then he’d suddenly wanted to be something better, something that could compare to whatever high holiness Aziraphale both wanted and deserved. He’d cursed the pale yellow eyes that stared back at him from mirrors and reflecting pools, and he’d tried, briefly, to cover up the serpent engraved in his cheek, but the sigil had burned through Estee Lauder, L'Oreal Paris, Maybelline New York, Dior, and even Yves Saint Laurent.

“If we’d been born humans,” he continued. “Just good, old-fashioned, ordinary humans, and we met in some good, old-fashioned, ordinary way. Maybe we became friends in primary school. Or maybe I tried to buy a book from your bookshop and even though you didn’t want to sell it, you made an exception for me because you thought I was devilishly handsome.” 

Aziraphale laughed. “Good lord.” 

“Or maybe,” Crowley went on, hit by a bite of motivation to get his point across. “Maybe we’d have met out feeding ducks. Or...or maybe we both became professors and we met at the faculty lunch. I’d teach maths, because I rather like them, after all, and you’d teach literature, because you like books so much. Or maybe we’d become professional footballers, and we’d just won the World Cup, and--” 

Aziraphale touched his arm, and Crowley fell silent. Gooseflesh erected under Aziraphale’s graze, and for a short and terrible moment, Crowley thought he’d gone too far. 

“It’s a nice thought,” Aziraphale said tenderly, putting Crowley’s fears to rest. “Nicer because you seem so sure that in any case, we’d have become friends.” 

“Oh, without a doubt!” said Crowley with certainty. “What was it that Aristophanes wrote about…” He didn’t want to say _love and wholeness_, because that wasn’t really his style. Sure, he was in a bit of a sentimental mood, but he was still a demon, after all. And so, instead, he said, “Zeus, striking lightning down and cutting people in half.” 

Aziraphale was caught off guard. “Oh?” 

Crowley wasn’t sure if Aziraphale was familiar with the old myth, or if he’d ask for an explanation. Either way, Crowley had gone into that bit of the conversation woefully underprepared, and so he quickly decided to change the subject. 

“Do you ever think about it, though? Being human? Not having to give a damn about Heaven, or Hell, or eternity?” He pointed out into the sky, though he wasn’t sure why. “Just being. Sitting out in a heath with some biscuits and coffee, talking about crazy, stupid, silly things. Like this, but every day.”

Of course, there was the unfortunate bit about dying, but Crowley liked the thought of mortality. Death didn’t scare him like it seemed to scare everybody else. And if he wasn’t a demon and Aziraphale wasn’t an angel, that invisible barrier between them would vanish once and for all, never to return no matter how much Gabriel rang his podgy little hands. No more would he be just a thwarted wile; No more would he pluck tar from his wings while Aziraphale’s remained as white and untouched by Hellfire as the waxed-over floors of Heaven itself; No more would he bear the remnants of the snake that whispered Earth’s first temptation into the willing ear of Eden’s first rebel.

They’d be equals. 

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale turned his gaze from the skyline to Crowley’s profile. “It isn’t worth even thinking about, because it isn’t real.” 

“I wish it was,” said Crowley, almost bitter. He didn’t notice the way the faerie circle, a plump collection of mushrooms arranged into a neat arc, seemed to rustle despite a clear lack of wind. “I wish you and I were just good, old-fashioned, ordinary humans, who didn’t have to worry about anything short of what we’re going to cook for dinner.” 

Aziraphale offered Crowley a biscuit, and he accepted, because it seemed a bit rude to refuse after he’d just dropped 6,000 years of baggage on Aziraphale without any prior warning.

“And I wish the world could accommodate everything you’ve ever dreamt of being,” Aziraphale smiled. Crowley could’ve wept. Damn it. That was the most romantic thing he’d ever heard in his life. The bastard. 

“But,” Aziraphale continued as-a-matter-of-factly. “We are what we are. To quote Oscar Wilde: _Be Yourself. Everyone else is already taken_.” 

Crowley scoffed. “Pedantic, wasn’t he?” 

“I think it’s a lovely quote.” 

Crowley smirked. “It was also Mr. Wilde that said, _I can resist everything except temptation_, wasn't it?” 

A hue of light pink rose in Aziraphale’s cheeks. He knew who that line had been written about, and it may or may not have been him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” he insisted. Crowley laughed. 

They went on like that for a long while, talking and teasing and bickering, as the expression goes, like an old married couple. Things were normal. Things were good.

But behind them, the circle of mushrooms lit up an angry shade of red, though only for a moment. If you’d have blinked, you would’ve missed it. A chorus of whispering voices chanted dead languages in low tones undetectable to the human — or angel, or demon — ear, and as storm clouds began to gather over the moor, something, somewhere, changed.


	2. A Human Body (B-Side)

Anthony J. Crowley had been many things. 

He’d been an angel first, of course. He was reminded of that every time he looked up into the vast nighttime sky and saw something lovely he’d help create. He’d always rather liked the nebulas; they were useless -- the real Rose Nylunds of space, if you asked him -- but they were pretty, and _nebula_ was a fun word to say. 

And then he’d been a demon, for some six-thousand years, now. He didn’t like to think about it much, because really, there wasn’t all that much to think about. He asked some questions, he made some friends, he fell, blah, blah, blah. 

He’d been a snake, and a monster, and a knight, and a gentleman, when the times called for it, but one thing Crowley had never been, was patient. 

And the bloody tube was taking its time. 

“Come on, come on, come on,” His fingers drummed against bar in front of him. He checked his watch. It hadn’t been keeping time since about 1:02 that afternoon. It was the first of many odd things to happen at about 1:02 that afternoon, and one of the principle reasons for his trip to Soho. 

The other reason, responsible directly for his trip _by tube_ to Soho, was the fact that at exactly 1:02 that afternoon, his Bentley refused to start. Said it was out of gas. It had been out of gas since sometime in the middle of the 20th century, and that had never stopped it before. 

***

Aziraphale was pacing the floor. 

Something was wrong. He could feel it. It wasn’t wrong in a the-end-of-the-world-is-back kind of way, but just in a way that was, without a doubt, wrong.

His first indication had come just after one o’clock. He and Crowley had been back from their picnic for almost an hour. He’d had some tea and a light snack -- left-over chocolate chip biscuits, of course -- and he’d settled down in his Good Chair to solve the daily crossword. 

Around the same time, a spider had begun to crawl up the side of Aziraphale’s Good Chair. It was a _segestria florentina_, more commonly known as a tube web spider, and it, much like Aziraphale, was going about its daily business without any idea that things were decidedly different. When it reached the arm of the Good Chair, and thusly, the arm of Aziraphale, it crawled right up the angel’s tartan sleeve and stopped only when it reached the brim of the teacup he’d held gently in his hand.

It wasn’t that Aziraphale was afraid of spiders. He was afraid of things that appeared in his bubble of personal space unexpectedly, and when he went to sip his tea to find himself eye-to-eyes with a most unsuspecting little creature, he let out a startled yelp and dropped the cup immediately. It shattered on the floor, and the tea spilled all over his puzzle. And at the center of it all, the spider laid very, very dead. 

“Oh, what a mess,” He groaned, crouching down and gathering the soggy newsprint. He looked at the spider with pity, first, and then all the guilt of an angel tasked with loving all God’s creatures big and small and hideously ugly. 

He took it in his hands and held it up to the light. It should’ve sprung back to life with the vigor of a spider that really knew just how lucky it was, but it didn’t. 

Aziraphale frowned. He tried it again. 

The spider was as dead as dead gets, with it’s hairy little legs curled up under its fat little body and it’s too-many eyes dim and lifeless. Aziraphale had read in the paper about a woman who had accidentally struck down a pedestrian in Manchester, and he imagined he felt a lot like she felt when she realized old Mr. Lindsey was dead under the bumper of her Volkswagen Beetle. 

“Terribly sorry,” He cooed to the insect as he carried it over to the lone plant he kept in his shop. (It was a rescue from Crowley’s flat.) He poked his fingers into the dirt, dug a bit, dumped the spider into the hole and filled it in. He only hoped it didn’t have a family.

He turned his attention again to the mess on the floor. With a low sigh, he waved his hand vaguely in its direction. The tea should’ve been sucked out of the newsprint and returned to its cup, which should’ve been miraculously pieced back together, but it wasn’t. Nothing happened. 

And so, Aziraphale began to pace. 

Just as he was planning on reaching for the phone, Crowley slammed into the front door. Aziraphale could hear him curse from the foyer. 

He jogged over to the door and unlocked it, and Crowley burst inside without missing a beat.

“Something’s wrong,” He declared moodilly, rubbing a sore spot on his forehead. “For starters, your bloody door must be broken.” 

Aziraphale offered him a biscuit. He decided to interpret Crowley’s glare as a polite no thank you.

“I worry it might not be the door, my dear,” Aziraphale sat down in his Good Chair and pointed miserably to the mess on the floor, and then to the plant. 

Crowley cocked a brow.

“I understand the spilled tea, but what’s the matter with the plant? I told you, it’s naughty, that one.” 

“It’s not naughty,” Aziraphale lamented. “I am!” 

Crowley blinked, taken aback. “What?” 

“That plant is the final resting place of a spider I murdered, and couldn’t bring back.” 

“Couldn’t bring back?” Crowley sat down with a thoughtful harrumph. “My Bentley is out of gas.” 

“It’s been out of gas since 1967,” Aziraphale rolled his eyes, put off. “You’re just now realizing it?” 

“No,” Crowley hissed. “It won’t start. It won’t go, I mean. And my watch is busted, too.”

“If your car won’t go, how’d you get here?” 

Crowley hung his head in an admission of guilt. “I took the tube.” 

Aziraphale would’ve grinned if the situation hadn’t been so dire. “You what?” 

“I took the damned tube, Aziraphale, can you focus!?” 

It was a well-established fact that Crowley was responsible for the poor infrastructure of the London Underground, much like he was responsible for the general misery of the M25. It didn’t spell out a demonic sigil like the road did, but it did form a rather rude shape. 

“You’re right,” Aziraphale conceded. “Something is going on.” 

“What do you think it is?” 

Aziraphale thought for a moment. His lip twitched into a pensive frown, but he quickly recovered, realizing that he’d been having what Crowley had once called a _face journey._

Crowley’s eyes narrowed.

“What?” He urged. “Are you alright?” 

“It’s a bit silly,” Aziraphale confessed with a tinlike laugh. “But when I’d first realized I couldn’t do proper magic, I wondered if I might’ve been...cast out.” 

“Cast out?” 

“Fallen,” Aziraphale turned to Crowley with a pained expression that shifted something deep in Crowley’s chest, something dusty and rusty and cobwebbed. 

“I’d been thinking about it since our respective trials, you know.” Aziraphale went on. “The possibility of it, I mean. If it would hurt.” 

Crowley opened his mouth, and then upon realizing he had nothing of use to say, he promptly shut it. He hadn’t yet told Aziraphale that he hadn’t _had_ a trial in Heaven. It was more of a death-by-fire ordeal, with Michael’s passive acquiescence and Gabriel’s smug set jaw and a very short _shut your stupid mouth and die already._

No, he hadn’t told him the truth, because a little white lie had never hurt anyone. The truth, on the other hand, had left more than its fair share of bumps and bruises. For whatever reason, Aziraphale wanted to believe that the heavens still held onto a few stray shards of godly affection for him, and who was Crowley to snatch that away? He’d planned on enjoying his time with Aziraphale before Heaven butt its haloed head back into the picture and put a lid on it all.

But until that very moment, Crowley hadn’t even considered the possibility of Aziraphale falling. 

“I doubt they’d do that to you,” he soothed, though that wasn’t true, either, come to think of it. They were still the same bastards they’d always been. But Crowley leaned in toward the angel and offered a soft smile. “They really seemed quite put out at your trial.” 

Aziraphale’s shoulders slumped with relief. He smiled, too -- the same reflexive smile he’d flashed that day in Eden, while they’d watched storm clouds gathered to the east of the once-mighty garden. It wasn’t necessarily that Crowley had been smitten -- at least not right away -- but rather that Aziraphale’s had been the first smile he’d seen in a long, long while, and the only one he looked forward to seeing again. Some things never change.

He took his sunglasses off and tired rubbed the bridge of his nose. Sometimes he wished his brain had a problem-solving autopilot, or better yet, an off-switch.

“Nevertheless,” Aziraphale quickly sobered. “What do you think--” He trailed off. His eyes locked on Crowley’s face and widened as far as they’d go. 

Crowley glanced over his shoulder, sure that Aziraphale had to be staring at something beyond him in the background, something horrific, by the looks of it. But there was nothing there except old stacks of books and a completely underwhelming and horrific-but-not-horrific-enough floor lamp that hadn’t worked since the mid-1880s.

“What?” Crowley demanded, more out of deep concern than mild annoyance. “Why are you looking at me like that?” 

Aziraphale put up his index finger as he turned around and began to rummage through his desk. Crowley crossed his arms. Again, patience was hardly his forte. He worried briefly if some odd, post-apocalyptic fluctuation had suddenly granted Aziraphale the power to read minds, and that he’d been so put off by what he’d seen in Crowley’s that he was, for the first time in 6,000 years, speechless. But he pushed the thought away into the same, messy little compartment he tucked everything he’d have to deal with sooner or later -- with an emphasis on the later -- and focused instead on what Aziraphale was searching for. 

In a swift, graceful twirl, Aziraphale turned to Crowley with a vintage gold-cast pocket mirror he’d been gifted by none other than Oscar Wilde sometime around 1892. It had a single crack across its surface, which Aziraphale maintained had been there since he’d gotten it, but a faint crack hardly stopped Crowley from noticing something that absolutely should not have been the case. 

Aziraphale stammered, “Your--”

“Eyes, yeah,” Crowley gulped. His eyes had been the same since he fell -- yellow with little slits, the eyes of a beast, which made seeing in the darkest depths of Hell an easy feat and navigating the (rare) sunny days on Earth a bit of a pain. (Hence the sunglasses, of course.) 

But the eyes staring back at Crowley from just beneath the surface of Aziraphale’s Victorian pocket mirror were green -- or rather, hazel, but that didn’t matter much in the moment. They were the kind of green-or-hazel eyes that you’d expect a red-head such as Crowley to have, with flecks of golden brown floating about outside of a very round, very normal pupil, dilated ever-so-slightly with fear.

They were not, however, the kind of green-or-hazel eyes that you’d expect a demon to have. Or an angel, for that matter.

Aziraphale had to sit down. He tucked his mirror into his pocket, and with his lips pursed and his hands folded neatly in his lap, he cleared his throat. 

“They’re becoming of you,” He suggested.

Crowley blinked, in a daze. “Right then.” 

Aziraphale looked away, and then at Crowley, and then at the floor. 

“They’re--” 

“Human,” Crowley interrupted. “Very, very human.”


	3. Sanctuary

Hours later in Manchester, a young boy had woken up. 

His name was Elliot Puck, or at least that’s what he’d tell you if you worked up the gall to ask him. (His real name was long since forgotten, and had been given to him in a language that hadn’t been spoken for at least 5,000 years.)

He wasn’t intimidating by nature, of course; his kind rarely were. But despite his small stature and soft, boyish features -- including but not limited to the wisps of dark curls framing round and podgy cheeks -- he gave off a sort of aura that even the most human of humans would feel and, if they had a decent sense of self-preservation, avoid. He was neither a scholar nor a slacker, neither friendly nor rude. He was average on almost all accounts. Almost. Except, of course, for where it mattered most. 

Sometimes, he liked that people left him alone. It made being a perpetual teenager easier. But sometimes, he didn’t like it so much; it also made it much, much lonelier. 

You see, his kind were different. He was forever young and always ancient in a way that was both contradictory and complementary. And even though no one could reasonably suggest he was older than, say, thirteen, he had the kind of eyes that should’ve belonged to someone who was born at the beginning of time itself, and knew quite well he would live up until its end. There might as well had been a neon vacancy sign plastered to his brow, because something about the way he looked at the world gave off a strong sense of disinterest. Boredom. Ennui. 

He had seen the Garden of Eden, and it hadn’t interested him much. What’s so special about some fruit you can’t eat? If he wanted that, he could’ve just waited until the 20th century, when decorative fruit bowls became popular. He’d seen the crucifixion of Christ, and really, he didn’t understand why it was such a big deal, either. People killed each other every day, in a myriad of awful, gory ways. Death, he’d learned, was the oldest pastime. 

He sat up in bed and stretched, nearly knocking a model plane down from his ceiling. He cursed at it and groaned before flopping back down into a heap of blankets and pillows. Elliot Puck was not a morning person, even at 4 p.m. Sunlight streamed in through his window, and he winced.

There was a knock at his door. 

“Elliot, open up!” 

“Sleeping,” He called back, and with a snap of his fingers, his curtains flipped shut.

“This is serious!” 

“Mhmm,” he was already beginning to nod off when the sheets were ripped off of him by a violent burst of wind. 

“Alright, alright,” He conceded. “You don’t have to be so dramatic.” 

He unlocked his door, and before he could open it, Leah had beat him to it. 

“Hell’s mad again,” She seemed annoyed.

Elliot shrugged. 

“I don’t work for Hell. You don’t either.” 

Leah gave him a look that made him feel small. She wasn’t any older than him, but sometimes, she liked to act as if she was. They’d come from the same place, though neither one of them could really remember much about it. If humans asked, they said they were twins. But humans rarely asked them anything. Humans never wondered where their parents were, or why they never went to school. If they did, they sure never brought it up.

“Time’s coming up for the tithes.” 

Elliot suddenly grew quite somber.

“It’s been seven years already?” 

“Sure has.” 

“I’d wager nothing happens if we don’t pay,” he suggested. “What are they going to do?” 

“Destroy us, for starters!” Leah thumped him on the back of the head. “You ever heard of a faery not paying tithes?” 

“No,” he paused for a moment to think. “But have you seen a demon? They’re slow buggers, the lot of ‘em,” he laughed. He lifted off the ground and began to zip around the room, much to Leah’s chagrin. “Dumber than angels, and stinkier than humans, and slower than...than…” He couldn’t think of anything slow enough to make sense. 

“Fine, for argument’s sake, let’s say you’re right. We could out-trick Hell, sure, but Mother wouldn’t be happy.” 

Elliot returned himself to the ground, and Leah knew she’d finally struck a chord.

“Right then.” 

“Hell wants souls, Elliot,” she said knowingly. “Flip you for Manchester.” She conjured a coin -- an old one, her favorite -- and with a flick of her wrist, sent it flying through the air. 

“Tails!” Elliot called. The coin flopped to the ground. It landed on heads. Leah’s coins always seemed to land on heads, come to think of it.

“No fair!” He protested. “You always get Manchester! I want a re-flip. My coin this time.” 

“Don’t be a sore loser,” Leah rolled her eyes. She snapped her fingers, and she was gone, with a puff of dust in her wake.

“_Don’t be a sore loser_,” Elliot mocked. “We’ll see who’s a sore loser when I win.” 

It wasn’t a game, of course, but that had never stopped Elliot from winning before. Leah was very adamant that the paying of the tithes was a very serious, pius matter, and that games were for human children who’d gone soft in the head. But Elliot rather liked games, and he had the added advantage of making the rules. 

***

For the last five hours, Aziraphale and Crowley had been doing what all humans do when faced with powerful forces above and beyond their understanding; drinking like fish. Two-and-a-half bottles of wine later, and they were, in fact, no closer to understanding anything. (Although, Crowley had formed a rather intricate albeit entirely unrelated theory about the social function of geese that was not quite developed enough to pitch to Aziraphale.) 

“You said,” croaked Aziraphale. “That you wanted this.” 

“Me!?” Crowley gaped at him, his glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose. “I was just...was just...you know, taking the piss! Just thinking out loud!” He had wanted this, but much like the Apocalypse, _wanting_ and _having_ had proven to be two different things entirely.

“Maybe this is fine,” Aziraphale slurred, flopping down on his couch. “Maybe this is...this is...ineffen...ineffell...meant to be.” 

Crowley sat down beside him and took a long, slow breath, the kind that started in his lungs and worked its way down to his stomach, expanding around his ribcage and knocking the cobwebs out of his chest. He was trying to think through the fog in his head, and it felt a lot like swimming through Jell-O. Not that he’d ever swam through Jell-O, but some sensations, he mused, could be inferred by context clues and a little bit of imagination. 

He’d forgotten what he was meant to be thinking about.

“You know what I think,” Aziraphale went on, gesturing broadly with his hands. His cup of wine paused before Crowley’s lips, and he took a sip of it. Aziraphale didn’t seem to notice. 

“I think,” he continued. “That it’s a curse.” 

“Or a blessing,” offered Crowley, quite out of character. The b-word tasted sour in his mouth, and he grimaced at the thought that he’d really said it, and worse, meant it. Crazy times, they were living in. Crazy times.

“No, certainly a curse,” Aziraphale stood up and swayed. Crowley suddenly felt very alone, though Aziraphale was a mere two paces away. “A curse, like the locusts, and also social media.” 

“Social media?” Crowley slurred. It made sense, in a vague sort of way; Facebook had been his demonic creation, though he was fairly certain Aziraphale had never heard of Mark Zuckerberg in the very same way that he’d once thought the Kardashians were the aliens from Star Trek. (Those, of course, were the Cardassians.)

Granted, Aziraphale was the first angel to ever own a computer, but his knowledge of computing began and ended with his 1977 Commodore Business Machines Personal Electronic Transactor (PET). He liked to joke and say it was the only pet he’d ever own. It lived longer than your average dog, too; forty years and some change later, it was still kicking. Kicking and screaming, sometimes, but kicking, nonetheless.

“Bad stuff,” Aziraphale continued. Crowley had once again forgotten what they’d been talking about. 

“Right,” He agreed blindly.

“Maybe I should call Head Office--” 

“No!” Crowley stood up so suddenly he nearly fell right back over. “You can’t call them! Not after what they did to you!” 

Aziraphale considered this for a moment. “You did say they were put out at my trial. Perhaps they’ll--” 

“For Heav--for Hell--for _Pete’s_ sake, angel, I lied! That's what demons do!” 

The words dripped sloppily from the corners of Crowley’s mouth, like a dribble of wine that had been, at first taste, just a little too bitter. He covered his mouth. Oops. 

Aziraphale cocked his head to the side. “About what, my dear? And you're the most honest demon I've--"

Crowley groaned. There was no going back. He thought about sobering up, but quickly decided that this was a conversation better had drunk. 

“Your trial. You didn’t have one.” 

Aziraphale’s features softened, then sank. 

“But--” 

“It wasn’t a trail,” Crowley bit his lip. His eyes stung. He blamed it on the dust they’d stirred up in digging out the alcohol from the back of Aziraphale’s shop. “It was an execution.” 

“I don’t understand,” said Aziraphale, with something that sounded horridly like desperation. “Heaven doesn’t execute people!” It wasn’t true. He knew that. He’d seen Sodom and Gomorrah, and he’d looked away. He’d felt the sting of harsh rain falling over the Mesopotamian wilderness, and again, he’d looked away. Now, there was nowhere left to look but at his very human, very drunk, very beloved friend, and Crowley was faltering under his stare.

Crowley told him everything. He told him about Gabriel and Uriel and Sandalphon and the ring of blazing fire that had reminded him miserably of the way the bookshop cracked and burned. He told him about the way they’d said, for Heaven’s sake, they made examples of traitors. 

“I’m sorry,” He said. “Really sorry, angel, but I don’t think Above is gonna take your call. They blocked your number for sure.” 

Crowley approached the window. It was raining outside. He’d seen enough films to know that the weather had a dark sense of humour. 

Aziraphale was still. He stared off into the stacks of books with an expression that belonged to a man who had realized, perhaps for the first time and perhaps for the second or even the third, that everything he’d ever known to be true simply wasn’t. He’d once heard a kindly American television personality profess that the Kingdom of God was for the brokenhearted, and he’d thought it was a beautiful and gentle thing to say. But now, he’d realized it couldn’t possibly be true, because the Kingdom of God was not for him, and his heart was broken in a way that no amount of tape and glue could fix.

Crowley knelt before him, an act of some sort of -olatry that Hell could've executed him for.

“I’m sorry, Aziraphale,” he repeated. 

Aziraphale shook his head and cleared his throat, managing a smile, reaching out to give Crowley's arm a soft pat. “Whatever for, my dear?” 

“I didn’t want you to find out,” Crowley babbled. “Seemed selfish.” 

_Seemed wrong to break your heart just like that. Seemed wrong to make you cry just so you’d stay here with me forever._

Crowley wanted to say those things, but he didn’t. Because he didn’t know how. Because he’d already said enough. 

Aziraphale shrugged, though his shoulders were stiff and the gesture felt forced. “The truth might sting, but such is life.” He stood up and headed toward the door. Crowley stared off after him, incredulous. 

“Where are you going?” 

“Fancy a trip to the pub?” Aziraphale retrieved Crowley’s jacket from the rack and extended it out to him. “We’re out of wine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all of the chapter titles are songs that fit the theme btw! so far we've got "The Origin of Love" from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Queen's "A Human Body" and "Sanctuary" by Joji. I'm neglecting my real life responsibilities with this fic and wholeheartedly continue to do so. comments and kudos appreciated :)


	4. Stand By Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for mild homophobia and slurs in this chapter, folks!

Elliot kicked a rock and watched it skid down the road. 

“Stupid Soho,” he griped. “Full of goodie-goodies. All the easy targets are in Manchester. Or America. Why don’t we ever go to America?” 

Truth be told, he didn’t really care much for this gathering-souls-to-pay-the-tithes-of-Hell business. He wasn’t a demon. The demons, he figured, were just lazy and smelly and wanted faeries to do their work so they could go off and do whatever it was demons did for fun. He’d much rather spend his time playing video games and leave all the damning to the professionals, thank you very much.

He didn’t think humans were anything special, but he liked them well enough. Even though Mother said they were trouble, he didn’t really understand all the fuss; They were fun to play with, like GI-Joe action figures that actually got scared and sad and excited and happy.

Sometimes, when he was bored beyond reason and not even a round of Mario Kart could pull him up and out of his rut, he’d think about how it would be kind of cool to be human. They’re limited, sure, but they’re crafty. Inventive. Temporary. The biggest thing most of them have to worry about is what they’ll make for dinner, or what their boss will say about their new haircut, or how much traffic they might hit on the motorway to Birmingham when the tourists are in on holiday. 

He liked the idea of being content in simplicity. He liked the idea of looking forward to the next great beyond. Humans thought of it as death, and they were more afraid of it than anything else, but he thought of it like this: There needs to be evil in the world to make the good stand out. That was God’s Big Theory of Things Part One. And to Elliot, there had to be death in the world to make the life stand out. Elliot had nothing ahead of him but a great stretch of the same thing, the same infinity, over and over again until the world ended once and for all. And then, he'd go somewhere else and do it all over again.

As he walked by a double-decker bus, he snapped his fingers, and the second story came tumbling down onto the first. No one had been on the bus, of course. He made sure of that. But it was fun to watch the driver, who’d been smoking a fat cigar far enough away from the vehicle, squirm and shout out in a frenzied bout of confusion.

“It’s these imported parts!” The driver cried to any passerby dumb enough to listen. “I swear it, these things just aren’t made right anymore!” 

Elliot laughed.

An important thing to understand about Elliot and most faeries is that they are, aside from tithe season, unbound to the norms and expectations of both the ethereal and the occult. They don’t answer to anyone, except Mother, who only ever comes around if there’s a crisis the size of a galaxy. (And if she comes around, there’s a good chance that galaxy-sized issue is about to become the least of your problems.) 

There are no reprisals for vice or rewards for virtue. Faeries are the moment of stillness after you first flip a coin, when the coin is suspended in the air and spinning fast; neither heads nor tails. Just there, perpetually, and neutral. 

Elliot had watched mountains sprout up from the Earth and empires fall in clouds of ash and dust. He’d seen the way humans are born and die, ascribed to doctrine and almost constantly aware of their impending mortality. The good ones -- and some of the really, really bad ones -- prayed every day in the hope that they’d end up upstairs, and the bad ones -- and some of the really, really good ones -- never once thought about God a day in their lives and seemed unbothered by what might await them on the other side. It was admirable, really. He liked the ones that didn’t care. 

Up ahead, he heard a commotion. Night was beginning to fall over London, and the storm clouds gathering just south of the city seemed to whisper sweet and mischievous nothings into the ears of drunkards and fools. The door to Jolly Joe’s pub swung open, and out of it spilled a streak of soft orange light and two very, very intoxicated men who looked as though they’d fall over the moment they let go of each other. 

Elliot focused hard and listened in. To Hell with Manchester. This was interesting. 

“--and stay out!” shouted the barman, a stout little fellow who Elliot had damned about seven years ago, last time tithe season had come around. He was glad to see he was doing well. Or rather, not well. But that was well enough. 

The first of the two men -- fair-haired and dressed in clothes straight out of the mid-19th century -- tried to stand up straight so hard that he nearly fell over backwards. The second of the pair caught him. Elliot noticed that the first man’s knuckles were bleeding.

“You hit those guys!” The second slurred, incredulous. “You really hit those guys!”

“Bloody right I did,” hiccuped the first. “He was quite nasty to you! And if Heaven’s listening, it isn’t like they care what I do!” 

The oddest part about them, though, was that they were, effectively, cursed. Their auras were blackened and charred, as if they’d been put through a fire, and Elliot had only seen such a thing come up as the result of faerie magic.

He grinned. He’d been hoping for something like this to come up and distract him from his so-called _ priorities. _

Elliot had a rather special skill, even as far as faeries were concerned. It was almost like clairvoyance, but it worked both ways, and it was personal. He never looked forward, because that would spoil the fun. But he did, on occasion, look backwards, just for curiosity's sake. 

He focused in on the pair of drunkards, and as he did so, a cold wind blew through the streets, and somewhere in the near distance, a dog began to bark. 

_ It wasn’t really what Crowley had had in mind when he’d thought about taking Aziraphale out for a drink. Of course he hadn’t expected a rom-com-esque night on the town to give When Harry Met Sally and Love Actually a run for their cliche cash, and he was hardly a stranger to drinking to dull feelings of sadness, loneliness, or inadequacy -- he’d been doing that since before the fall of Rome. But drinking to forget with Aziraphale, who was three bottles deep in the finest pinot noir that €50 and puppy-dog eyes could buy, was new, and he didn’t like the darkness clouding beneath the angel’s pink-tinged eyes. _

_“So,” He began, and his voice felt blurry. “This is a nice place, yeah?” _

_Aziraphale nodded thoughtfully. The pub wasn’t like what he’d pictured. He’d been to pubs before, of course, but not for quite some time. The popinae in Ancient Rome just might’ve been cleaner than Jolly Joe’s, but Google Maps had told him it was the closest, and he’d lost feeling in his legs about three drinks ago. He just preferred the more delicate indulgences, like crepes. And something told him that Jolly Joe’s did not sell anything of the like. _

_But that was fine enough by him. Something rotten had settled in his stomach, and he felt a little sick, a little hurt, and a little scared. But Crowley’s leg had settled into a position where his knee pressed against Aziraphale’s, and the angel took comfort in the warmth of close contact. He might not have Heaven, but he had Crowley. He could picture for himself a future without God; it was dismal and lonely and frighteningly unknown, but he could see it. But he couldn’t picture for himself a future without Crowley. To try evoked something befitting of only the most arcane horrors, a deep pit of dark nothingness, a lingering dread that he couldn’t drink away. To lose Crowley was to lose the best parts of himself. He knew that. He'd always known that, even when he wished he hadn't._

_It was an odd thing, really; He knew that Heaven had its problems, like any other sort of bureaucracy. He’d known that he was better off on Earth the moment he realised he was expected -- no, required -- to fight yet another war for war’s sake. In a world so filled to its murky brim with hatred, Aziraphale had been condemned for falling in love, first with humanity, and then with Crowley. He knew it wasn’t fair. He knew it wasn’t morally correct, and he knew he’d made the right choice. But it still stung. Like a lover leaving a bad romance, he felt liberated and wounded and relieved and alone all at once._

_But secretly, he’d hoped it had hurt them, too. In a tiny, dark little compartment tucked away into the farthest reach of his ethereal conscious, he’d hoped wickedly that Heaven had wept for him, or at the very least, that they’d been ever-so-slightly put out. The fact that they didn’t really care, that his death would’ve meant less to Gabriel and Uriel than the stomping of a half-dead fire ant...it made him feel small, and not in a cozy kind of way._

_He’d forgotten that he was meant to be having a conversation. It was only when Crowley cleared his throat that he remembered._

_“Mhmm,” He affirmed, sipping his drink. “It’s fine.” _

_“Are you?” _

_“Am I?” _

_“Fine,” Crowley prompted. “Are you? Fine, I mean.” _

_It was wrong to lie, Aziraphale mused. Wronger yet to lie to Crowley. But what was a little white lie between friends? _

_“I am,” He decided, and he smiled. Crowley reached out and gave his hand a gentle pat. To his shock, Aziraphale didn’t pull away. _

_“Glad to hear it,” Crowley said softly. “Because let me tell you, angel--” _

_“Is it fair to call me that?” Aziraphale slurred. “I’m not, anymore. Nor are you a demon. We’re the beautiful greyscape in between, my dear. Human.” _

_Crowley leaned in close. He could smell the wine on Aziraphale’s breath. His heart skipped a beat. Alcohol seemed to take away his ability to feel afraid._

_“No matter what,” he began, more coherent than he’d anticipated. “No matter what you are -- angel, demon, human, I don’t care if you’re a bloody kangaroo, Aziraphale. You’re always holy to me.” _

_Aziraphale got the feeling in the pit of his stomach that he was falling from a great height, and it was bliss. It was excited. It was wondrous! Under his skin burned a need to be closer to Crowley -- so close that they just as well could’ve been two halves of the same whole, split clean down the middle long before Earth was molded from stardust. This was the feeling of being reunited at last. He looked up from his drink -- his eyes had settled into the swirling purples of cheap wine -- and met Crowley’s stare. _

_He still wore his sunglasses; Old habits died hard. Carefully, Aziraphale reached up and removed them. It was the most intimate act he’d ever performed. No amount of clotheslessness could compare to the emotional nakedness of the divine silence they shared on the crux of a moment. It was the same silence that rang through the universe before God created sound. _

_Aziraphale was an old and sentimental fool, but he wasn’t foolish. In his periphery, he noticed a trio of large, buff men gawking at them. It was enough to make him pull away. At first, Crowley seemed put out. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but a tiny part of him had hoped for a kiss. But when Aziraphale nodded toward the trio, Crowley began to understand. _

_“Hey,” one man called out. Crowley looked up. He instantly wished that he hadn’t. _

_The first ruffian, who looked as though his name could be Chad or Chuck or maybe even Buster, took a seat beside Aziraphale and put his hand on his shoulder. Crowley leaned toward him. Something deep in his chest began to coil. _

_“You two fellas seem out of place,” he sneered. “The Garden is down the way a bit.” _

_The Garden, of course, was the gayest gay bar in London. It was an allusion to The Garden of Eden, with (out-dated and less than clever) motifs surrounding the trope of forbidden love. Aziraphale had gone there once or twice, and he hadn’t been impressed._

_“Oh, dear man, you’ve got it wrong!” Aziraphale slurred, though his tone wasn’t as jovial and pleasant as his words might’ve made it seem. There was a darkness to him that he usually found to be quite untoward, and thus, he kept it under wraps. But the beast was awake and wild. He’d sensed danger, and for some reason, he smiled at it and beckoned._

_“Angels and demons, you see, are sexless, unless we try very hard, and this is hardly the place to try,” He began, too drunk to conceptualise the humans’ confusion. One of them had a crucifix tattoo on his bulging bicep. To Aziraphale, that meant he’d understand something unspoken. That, of course, wasn’t the case. It rarely ever was._

_“And, you know, The Garden caters to a very specific sex. We wouldn’t fit in there at all.” Aziraphale continued. Crowley’s eyes widened. If he’d been sober, he would’ve taken Aziraphale by the arm and pulled him out of the bar and all the way home, but he was very, very intoxicated, and still sort of thinking about geese._

_“Azi...Apirazale…” Crowley shook his index finger, which to him, had meant, "Quiet down, angel, these people are morons." But to Aziraphale, who was equally wasted and still sort of thinking about how nice it would be to kiss Crowley, it had meant, "Look at this silly dance my finger can do!"_

_“Quite nice,” Aziraphale smiled. He turned back to Chad-Chuck-Buster. “Your sex, however, might find a jolly good time at The Garden.” _

_Of all the incorrect things to say, that one was inching closer and closer to the top by the second, and Aziraphale was damn proud of it. Chad-Chuck-Buster grabbed him by the collar and pushed him forcefully into Crowley. The other two, who looked like an Igor-Rufus-Ivan and a Tim-Tom-James respectively, quickly flanked him. _

_Crowley stepped in between Aziraphale and the bullies. A few other patrons looked on, eager to see a fight. _

_“Listen up, boys,” Crowley began cordially. “This is just a big, stupid misunderstanding. If you leave now, nobody has to get hurt.” _

_Igor-Rufus-Ivan laughed. “You think we’re scared of you and your little boyfriend, do you?” _

_“It takes more than a couple of bent-up bufties to scare us,” chimed in Tim-Tom-James. He’d revealed himself to be a Scotsman, and suddenly, he looked more like a Glenn._

_“We don’t want your type poking around in our spaces,” Chad-Chuck-Buster advanced on them. He turned to his cronies. “Backs to wall, lads. For all we know, they could be planning their next move.”_

_“Don’t flatter yourself,” Crowley sneered. “You aren’t our type.” _

_It was the best insult; you could call a homophobe ugly, and if he disagreed, you could call him gay._

_A fist bashed into Crowley's lip, and he stumbled backwards. His hand came up to press against the sudden ache right away. That hurt a hell of a lot more than it used to! _

_He steadied himself, ready to fight, but by the time he’d clambered to his feet, Aziraphale was standing up, his fist bleeding and held up high in the air. Aziraphale was looking at it as if it’d unleashed some strange and foreign power he’d never seen before and didn’t know how to control. The rugged trio were very much out of commission. Crowley’s jaw fell open, and then he burst into laughter. He'd never been more in love. _

If Elliot had been confused by the faerie magic’s inky aura, he was really confused at whatever the hell that was. He didn’t know what their deal was, but as he saw it, he had a lot to gain in finding out; In the best case-scenario, it was true what the fair-haired cherub had said and thought about Heaven and angels and demons, and if he could secure the soul of an angel, he wouldn’t hear it from Mother for at least a decade or two. In the worst case-scenario, they were stupid, crazy humans who meddled in something they didn’t understand, and in that case, they were easy targets. 

“Hey, ‘scuse me!” He jogged to catch up to them.

“Oh,” said Aziraphale. “Lost child!” 

“Not lost,” Elliot corrected. “Not a child.”

The closer he got, the more it became apparent that they were not fully human. Or at least, they hadn’t always been. Humans had a certain _ je ne sais quoi _ about them that these two weirdos just didn’t have. Further, faeries had a way of sensing a human’s age. It might’ve been evolutionary, he thought. A means of self-preservation. Once they hit adulthood, all humans kind of looked the same. But according to his senses, which had never been wrong in all his (thousands of) years, the two men standing before him were, to be precise, seven hours and forty-three minutes old.

_ Well, _Elliot thought. _ If I show them my hand, maybe they’ll show me theirs. _

And even if they didn’t, it sure would be fun to scare them silly.

Elliot stepped into the shadow of the streetlight buzzing above them. He sank down into it, merging with it, taking its form as his own. Aziraphale rubbed his eyes. Crowley stammered incoherently. He was wondering what exactly he’d been drinking in the pub, and whether or not those assholes hit him a bit too hard in the head.

Behind them, from the shadow of Jolly Joe’s pub, Elliot emerged. He cleared his throat. The pair turned to face him with horror made mild by inebriation.

“This would be more fun if you weren’t drunk,” Elliot snapped his fingers. Crowley doubled over and vomited. Aziraphale, shortly after, did just the same. 

“What the hell?” Crowley croaked, wiping the corner of his mouth as he leaned against the light post for support. Aziraphale, disgusted with himself and the horrific (human) thing his body had just done, attempted to rub the headache from his temples. 

“Are you…” Aziraphale looked at Crowley, and then to the boy. “A fairy?” 

“Are you?” Elliot smirked. Aziraphale, hardly impressed with his double entendre, rolled his eyes. He turned to Crowley.

“I’ve only ever heard about them,” he said. 

“What the hell is it?” Crowley looked at Elliot, who smiled pleasantly and waved. “Not a human. Not one of our lot. Too much of a little prick to be an angel.” 

“No one knows, for sure,” Aziraphale lowered his voice. “Some think that when the first angels rebelled and Satan fell, not all of the rebels were damned; Some weren’t quite bad enough for Hell, but they weren’t good enough for Heaven, either. So they became…” He gestured vaguely toward Elliot. “That.” 

Crowley’s first instinct was a pang of hurt. He was a rebel, once. Had he been bad enough? Or rather, not good enough? Something about it left a sour and ironlike taste in his mouth. (He hadn’t realized yet that the brute’s fist had left his inner lip bleeding.)

“Do you always talk about people like they aren’t in the room?” Elliot looked around. “Or, well, on the street?” 

“My apologies,” Aziraphale offered an uncomfortable smile. He was still shocked that he’d actually knocked out three humans, and worse (better?) yet, he didn’t actually feel bad about it. He just couldn’t bring himself to be openly rude to the boy standing before them, even if he was a bit odd. One darkly human action per night was as much as he could manage. “Can we help you?” 

“Well,” said Elliot pleasantly. “Maybe we can help each other.”

Crowley was ready to ask him how, and then why -- where he came from, there was always a catch -- but before he had the chance to, tires screeched against pavement, a long and high squeal that he felt in his bones.

Then, gunshots. Fast, loud, and deadly.

A few things happened all at once: Aziraphale and Crowley grabbed hold of each other’s arms and, with their free hands, covered their heads as they dropped to the ground. Aziraphale felt the cobblestone dig sharply into his knees. He’d never felt that before. He’d also never felt a grasp as tight as the one Crowley had on him, but for measure, he was sure his hold was tighter. A bullet ricocheted off of the light pole, narrowly missing Aziraphale’s extended arm. A car alarm began to wail. Someone screamed. Aziraphale realized that it might’ve been him.

With a clap of his hands, Elliot froze time. Thunder rumbled and rain began to fall right as he did it, and it, too, stayed still. Slowly, Aziraphale and Crowley straightened up, their arms still interlocked. Crowley reached out to touch one of the raindrops. It shattered like glass. 

“How’d you do that?” He asked, watching in awe as shards of broken rain floated back up into the sky.

“No time,” Elliot paled. “It’ll only stay like this for a minute, and then it’ll all go back to normal. We should run, now.”

No one had to tell them twice.


	5. Earth Angel

Aziraphale’s bookshop, behind locked doors, felt safe. It wasn’t, and part of Crowley knew that. If he tried hard enough, he could still smell the lingering stench of charred paper. It wasn’t there in reality, but it was there nonetheless, scorched in his senses and burned in his mind. He’d never be able to let it go. It often tore him away from the cusp of sleep.

“What the hell do you think that was about?” he asked, peeking out through a crack in the blinds. It was raining. Hard. It always seemed to rain hard when something terrible was waiting to happen. Crowley had always thought it was just God’s sick sense of humor. 

“I don’t know,” Aziraphale admitted. He’d put on tea, because he wasn’t sure what else to do. “You don’t think we were the intended targets, do you?” 

“It sure felt like it!” Crowley insisted. He’d been shot at before, of course; He’d hidden himself away in the throes of gunfire during the Second World War. The battle field was the one place where even Hell feared to look, and it followed, then, that they would never notice how many bombs were miraculously diverted away from schools full of children, or how many synagogues stubbornly refused to burn. (There were some evils that not even a demon could permit.)

Aziraphale set one hot cup of tea in front of Crowley, who immediately returned from his musings to sip it and promptly spit it out. He'd forgotten that the human tongue was not fond of heat. Aziraphale, amused, set the other in front of Elliot, who had invited himself in. After he saved both of their lives, it didn’t feel right to ask him to leave. And besides, he might be able to help them.

“I don’t see why anyone would want us dead,” Aziraphale continued, sitting down cross-legged on the couch.

Crowley gawked at him. “You don’t? I can think of, like, a thousand people per each of us that would absolutely throw a raging party if we died! All of Heaven and Hell, for starters!" 

Aziraphale considered this, and then nodded solemnly. “Alright. Maybe so.” 

“You two seem to have a lot of issues,” Elliot remarked, taking a swig of the tea. He seemed impervious to its heat, but his nose scrunched in distaste. “Don’t you have any sugar?” 

Aziraphale snapped his fingers, and when the sugar didn’t appear in his palm, he frowned. He’d almost forgotten he had to do things the hard way now.

“I’m afraid not.” 

Elliot rolled his eyes.

“I have to do everything myself,” he huffed, waving his hands and conjuring a handful of sugar cubes. Crowley and Aziraphale watched him, dual parts stunned and impressed.

“So,” Elliot leaned back in his chair, content with himself. “You two made a deal with a fae, huh?” 

“We’ve done no such thing!” Aziraphale defended. “Why would you even imply it?” 

“Faerie magic,” Elliot gestured vaguely toward them. “Your auras are full of it. Bad faerie magic, too.” 

“What’s he on about?” Crowley glared at him, and then looked more gently toward Aziraphale. “I still only half-understand what a bloody faerie is.” 

“A faerie is what I am,” Elliot huffed rudely. “That’s all you need to know, mister. That, and that a faerie who isn’t me has cursed you well and good.” 

“Maybe we were overheard our our picnic,” Aziraphale suggested. It was just about the only thing that made a lick of sense. “When you said--” 

“Yeah, yeah, I know what I said,” Crowley stood up and began to pace. He still maintained that it wasn’t the end of the world, being human. But if Aziraphale was unhappy with it and it was his fault, he had, by extension, hurt Aziraphale. After 6,000 of trying (and often succeeding) to do just the opposite, it felt like a personal failure, and he felt a deep and unyielding guilt take him by the throat and squeeze. “I miss my car, you know.” 

“You could always put gas in it,” Aziraphale suggested gently. Crowley paused, as if he hadn’t considered this before. Aziraphale decided to give him a moment.

“How do we fix it?” He continued. “The faerie stuff, of course. The car is just common sense.” 

Elliot laughed. That, Aziraphale figured, was not a promising sign.

“You can’t fix it. But I can. I’ll make you a deal, if--” 

“No!” Aziraphale cut him off. “Absolutely not!” 

Crowley nudged the angel gently in the ribs. “Maybe we ought to hear what he has to say, angel.” 

What an odd world, he thought, where a demon (former demon?) went around trusting the kindness of strangers. All of a sudden, Crowley felt very alone in his humanity. He wondered if that’s the way the rest of the world felt all the time, or if he was just a bit of an anomaly. 

“No,” Aziraphale repeated. “You don’t ever want to make a deal with a fae. They’ll twist it and make it into something that serves them. It’s like the fine print in the Terms of Agreement. You should never accept the Terms of Agreement without reading the fine print!” 

Crowley, who was single-handedly responsible for Terms of Agreement -- most specifically, their length and density -- made a faint sound of understanding, though he didn’t really get it.

“That’s a tad bit presumptive, isn’t it?” Elliot pouted. “It isn’t nice to make generalisations like that!” He had a plan, and it largely relied on the angel being stupid enough to fall for it. 

Aziraphale and Crowley shared a sideways glance. It was true, Aziraphale figured, that things weren’t always as they seemed. That was the whole point, wasn’t it? Free will. He’d thought, at first, that supernatural beings were exempt from the clause that Crowley had sealed in the Garden of Eden, that the pursuit of individual knowledge was a uniquely human affair. But humans, it seemed, had more in common with angels and demons -- and perhaps, the fae -- than he’d thought.

“We’ll consider it,” Aziraphale said with authority. “In the meantime, I think we ought to be trying to figure out who shot at us.”

Before Crowley could reply, there was a knock at the door. Everyone froze. 

“What’s that about?” Crowley slinked closer to Aziraphale.

“A customer?” 

“In this rain? This late?” 

“Police,” Barked a voice from behind the door. “Open up!” 

Elliot cursed and clapped his hands. In a puff of smoke, he was gone. 

“Glad to know he’s in it for the long haul!” Crowley hissed. “What the--” 

Another knock. Aziraphale took hold of Crowley’s arm. 

“Maybe they’ll help us.” 

“Oh be real, Aziraphale, when have the police ever helped anyone? You were just in a bar fight, and then shots went off outside!” 

Aziraphale hadn’t thought of that. Suddenly, he felt sick.

“Oh. They can’t possibly think I--” 

Another knock. Angrier this time. 

“We have a warrant, Mr. Fell, open up or we will force our way inside!” 

"A warrant!?" Aziraphale paled. "Doesn't it take time to get those?" 

“C’mon,” Crowley took his hand and started off toward the back exit. “Let’s get out of here before we have to find out.” 

“We can explain it all!” Aziraphale insisted. “It’s just a horrid misunderstanding!” 

“We don’t have time for this, angel, let’s go!” 

In Aziraphale’s mind, there was a war waging. On one side, everything he’d ever known about law and morality and divine mercy. On the other, the truth. It was that same conflict he had when he’d first learned that Heaven had sentenced him to death without even batting an eye, and, if he was willing to look back further, the same conflict he’d felt when God cast out Adam and Eve, and then again when They flooded the Earth, and then again at Sodom and Gomorroah, and then again, and again, and again…

After a moment’s hesitation, he gave himself over to it and let Crowley tug him toward the back door. Crowley had never made him feel conflicted. Heaven had made him feel conflicted about Crowley, but that, he decided, was different.

The two of them escaped silently, pouring out onto the streets of Soho and darting away into the rain.

***

Aziraphale and Crowley had been correct on more than one account. Namely, when they supposed they were the intended targets. They were only a little bit wrong in implying that Heaven or Hell had sent the shooter. They simply had the wrong logical operator: It wasn’t Heaven _or_ Hell. It was Heaven _and_ Hell. It was the first time they’d worked together since before the War. They had become the kind of old friends that only saw each other at weddings and funerals, and if they could just cook up a good old-fashioned funeral for the two morons who had gotten themselves conveniently human-ified, they could go back to ignoring each other until Kingdom Come finally came.

The hitman was named Jasper Simes, and he had been in purgatory for the last 157 years. 

He was a rugged old man in the body of a rugged young man, with broad shoulders and golden tangles that might’ve once been plump curls. His face had been pretty, 157 years ago, and he’d had a girl that used to kiss it over and over again until they fell asleep together, interlocked, in love. But now, there was a gaping hole where his left eye had been, and in it there was a darkness that might as well have come from the same cut of fabric as the universe itself. Though he’d long since bled out, his skin around the wound was still yellowed and bruised and gnarled and ugly. Time stopped in Purgatory, and so did the healing functions of the body.

He used to be a man of God, but upon death, he’d learned that “man of God” apparently meant something different than the life he’d been living in the rural American South, circa 1860. Go figure.

A long time ago, he liked to think it would be nice to go to Heaven and see his girl once again, but an eternal pause in time had numbed him, and knowing Cassie, there was just as good a chance that she’d gone down below. He didn’t care anymore where he went himself, as long as he went somewhere, and Heaven and Hell had promised him entry to whichever fate he chose, should he successfully assassinate two runaway traitors. 

It seemed easy enough. Everything seemed easy when the alternative was staring at the same walls, pacing the same floors, reading the same off-beat motivational posters that only ever sort of made sense. They weren’t kidding when they called Purgatory by the name of Fate’s Waiting Room. 

The problem, though, was that guns had changed a great deal since 1862, when Jasper had last shot one at some Yank during the Second Battle of Bull Run in Prince William County, Virginia. It hadn’t gone too well for him then, either, considering he was shot in the face before he had the chance to actually discharge his weapon. But he’d left that little detail out when Lord Beelzebub and the Archangel Gabriel had come into the greyscale little room he’d been pacing ever since and offered him a deal he couldn’t refuse. 

He might’ve missed his mark with the actual targets, but Jasper had set into motion a chain of events that would, ultimately, make for a much better story. The bullets had instead hit Chad-Chuck-Buster, Igor-Ivan-Rufus, and Glenn. (Real names, Johnny, Mike, and Glenn, respectively.) All three of them were pronounced dead at the scene.

"You _missed_?" Lord Beelzebub's voice had buzzed with the annoying intensity of a horse fly. "I thought you said--" 

"D-don't worry!" Jasper assured them, his voice rich with the honeyed twang of the old American South. "I can get them next time!" 

"You better," Gabriel smiled. It was neither a happy nor pleasant smile. "Or else, it'll be back to Fate's Waiting Room for God knows how long." 

"We won't keep fixing your mistakes," Lord Beelzebub snarled. "Now get back out there, and kill the demon Crowley!" 

"And the principality Aziraphale," Gabriel added.

"Yeah, yeah," Lord Beelzebub gave a dismissive wave. "Him, too." 

And now, because of some sort of ethereal intervention -- divine in the worst sense, of course -- the gun was found tucked under a rubbish can a block or so away from Jolly Joe’s. On it were the fingerprints of a man who had died more than a century and a half ago, but a very confused laboratory technician would find the following morning that the prints suddenly and miraculously belonged to Mr. A.Z. Fell.

Jasper materialised back on Earth, in the middle of a field with tall, yellowed grass that bowed to the breeze. He didn't know where he was, but the rain was coming down hard. It never used to rain this much in Virginia. This, he figured, was why America had declared its independence. 

He picked a direction that felt right, and armed with a pocket knife and a pistol, he headed due south.

This is not the last we will see of Private Jasper Simes.


	6. Halo

Leah had managed to secure eleven and a half souls for Satan. 

The half has belonged to a ninety-six-year-old Irish woman named Irena living in Notting Hill. She was, for all intents and purposes, already probably going to Hell for being an All Around Awful Time, but on the chance that she was somehow scraping by in God’s favor before Leah made a deal with her, she decided to count it as half a point. Besides, miraculously removing a caramel chew from Irena’s dentures in exchange for her mortal soul was no easy task; Leah figured she’d earned that half point, fair and square.

“So,” She glanced over at Elliot, her expression dual parts smug and snide. “How many have you got?” 

Elliot shrugged. “That’s for Hell to know, and you to find out.”

“Fancy way of saying you’ve got none,” She smirked. “Soho’s got plenty of businessmen walking around bullying people into doing all sorts of dirty work. You couldn’t find one to make a deal with?” 

Elliot popped a candy in his mouth. He’d made it appear from thin air. 

“You see, I’ve decided to change my focus. I’ve decided I want to focus on long-term goals now.” 

Leah was unimpressed. “What?” 

“I’m working on something pretty big,” He conjured another candy. “I’m going to damn an angel.” 

Leah snorted. “Yeah. Sure.” 

“I mean it!” Elliot stood up, defensive. “I’m going to! I’ve got one, and he’s got a problem. You see, he’s been cursed by another faerie somehow, and I’m going to undo it, but under the guise that I get his--” 

Leah stood up and began to walk away. Elliot, put off, followed her.

“This is cool, Leah, why--” 

“Your games are stupid,” She told him pointedly. “You can’t damn an angel. They’re angels.” 

“But let’s say I could! Wouldn’t it be something?” 

Leah rolled her eyes. “But you can’t!” 

“But if I could…” 

“If you could, it would certainly be something. But you can’t, and you’re wasting your time. I’m going to go off and do some real work before you get us both in trouble by lolly-gagging around.” 

Leah snapped her fingers, and she was gone. Determined to prove her wrong, Elliot set his jaw, squared his shoulders, and popped his last candy into his mouth. It was time to get to work.

***

It was only a twelve minute walk from Soho to Mayfair. Fifteen, if you take into account the fact that no one within the city of London moves with any sort of purpose or urgency whatsoever. Sometimes, it was faster to take the tube. But most of the time, it was not. And with the added complication of avoiding the police, the trip had become rather challenging. 

Crowley and Aziraphale had been walking for almost half an hour, and they’d passed Poland Street four times. 

“We’re lost,” Crowley complained. “We’ve lived in London for how long? Since there were knights and all that. Probably hundreds of years. And yet, we can’t get ourselves from Soho to Mayfair.” 

“Perhaps we were too reliant on our special skills,” Aziraphale mused. He had an odd, sinking feeling in his gut. It could’ve been stress, or anxiety, or fear, or all of the above, but he decided to call in hunger, and he hadn’t stopped complaining about it. 

“Crepes would be nice right about now,” he said. “Can we be on the run from the law in France?” 

“We’re not going to France,” Crowley griped. “We’re going to my flat.” 

“Do you have food there?” 

“We have bigger fish to fry than hunger, angel.” 

“I do love fish,” Aziraphale pouted. 

A few paces ahead of them, there was a flash of natural light, and then from the throes of a faint cloud, Elliot emerged. Aziraphale and Crowley groaned.

“I half-expected to see you two in jail,” Elliot smirked. 

“We’re smarter than a couple policemen,” Crowley boasted. 

“Oh, of course,” Elliot grinned. “That’s why you’ve been walking in circles, is it? To throw off those policemen?”

Crowley opened his mouth to say something quite unkind, but Aziraphale touched his arm to keep him quiet. Touching his arm always short-circuited something in Crowley’s brain, and it bought him a few minutes to change the subject.

“I fear running only made us seem guilty,” Aziraphale glanced over at Crowley. “I do hope we can clear this all up.” 

“It’ll be fine,” Crowley promised him. He’d make it fine, one way or another. “You,” he pointed at Elliot. “How do you break a curse, or whatever this is? True love’s kiss? Poison apple?” 

Elliot made a face.

“I think you watch too many films.” 

“I think you don’t watch enough,” Crowley bickered. “No imagination! You’re just like Hasur in that way, you know. If it isn’t spelled out right in front of you, you just don’t get it!” 

That, of course, couldn’t be farther from the truth. Elliot was unnaturally in tune with the world around him. His heart beat in time with the steady ebb and flow of nature. He could pause the rain and fracture beams of moonlight. He could feel the sensations of the Earth, and right now, he was feeling Leah’s anger from across the city. She was looking for him. But he didn’t want to be found. 

“You want to fix this, don’t you?” Elliot gestured to their human forms. “Well, here’s what you have to do.” 

The next few sentences were all certainly lies. All, except for one. (Which one is yet to be known.)

“I can fix it all for you, you know. We just have to go back to where the first encounter happened. Where the faerie who cursed you lives. It’s all easy, really. But there’s no such thing as a free lunch. There are, however, a lot of things out there far more dangerous and worthy of your distrust than a simple faerie. I should be pretty low on your list of worries right now.” 

Aziraphale considered this, and then shrugged. Elliot had absolutely no idea how to interpret that.

To Crowley, the scenery was beginning to look familiar. He could tell they were getting close to Mayfair, and in Mayfair, his cozy, clean, normal flat awaited. He wanted nothing more than to sleep of this bad dream and awake to a gentler tomorrow. (Well, he wanted one thing more, and it was for Aziraphale to sleep it off with him.) They’d come so close to something big in the bar. They’d been teetering precariously on the crux of a moment when they’d been so rudely interrupted. Crowley wanted the exchange to continue. But there were other issues that he figured had to take precedence. 

For instance, the annoying little faerie that might just be able to make everything fine again. 

“Can we go first thing tomorrow?” Crowley urged. He felt as if he’d aged a month in the last 24 hours. The day had been long. He figured it made sense; for an immortal being, each day was barely a hair on the head of eternity. 100 years felt like a week when you’d been around since The Beginning. But humans, assuming an average life expectancy of 82.9 years , had only 30,258.5 days before it all went belly-up (or, in some cases, belly-down). Each passing day took up a larger chunk of the time they had left, and so it only made logical sense that each passing day felt longer, harder, scarier. 

Aziraphale echoed Crowley’s fatigue. “That might be best.” 

Elliot, though impatient, had committed himself to the pursuit of long-term goals. 

“Alright,” He conceded. “But I don’t like to be kept waiting.” 

And like that, he was gone.

Crowley scoffed. “That kid’s the bossiest preteen I’ve ever seen, and I dealt directly with Julius Caesar.” 

Aziraphale chuckled. “The fae are rather demanding. I still don’t know if we should trust him.” 

“What choice do we have, angel?”

Aziraphale thought for a moment. 

“This could be our new normal.” 

Crowley gawked at him. 

“You mean that?” 

Aziraphale shrugged. “It’s all so strange, my dear.” 

Aziraphale’s mind had been the battleground for an internal civil war, and he was both sides. He was both a Parliamentarian and a Royalist -- metaphorically, of course. (Realistically, he’d been a staunch cavalier.) Yes, he was both sides in his mental conflict, and yet, he still managed to lose. He’d lost a part of himself when he realized with definitive finality that there was no longer a place for him in Heaven. He lost the love he had for God. But he’d found that missing piece -- that missing love -- in the way he felt for Crowley. 

See, humans were like the fae in one important way that even Elliot didn’t understand: Humans aren’t bound by the conventions of good or evil, either. Some are good, some aren’t, but most have a great shining light within them, and right next to that great shining light, there’s a deep, dark pit rife with the kind of monsters that go bump in the night. Freshly human, Aziraphale had slipped into that pit when he’d struck the men at the bar, and at first, it had scared him. But then, very suddenly, it didn’t.

“In some ways, I feel free,” he continued, inspired by Crowley’s thoughtful silence. “In others, afraid, yes, but don’t you think the first bird to ever fly felt afraid at first, too?” 

Crowley couldn’t wept. Damn poetic bastard. Crowley might’ve been the inspiration for Shakespeare’s prose and the lyrics to most Queen songs and Hozier ballads, but Aziraphale’s penchant for the beautifully dramatic had worked its way into the writings of Robert Frost, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, and Oscar Wilde. 

“And then, the flight,” Aziraphale gestured broadly, a lovely smile spreading across his face. Crowley softened. Falling from Heaven had been easier than falling in love. “Fear falls away like chains or shackles, and for the first time, the bird knows no limits. Of course, humans have many limits. How much they can eat, how long they can be awake, how fast they can read or run; but angels and demons, we have eternal limits. What we can do. What we can want.” A pause. “Who we can love.” 

Crowley, of course, had never been an acne-faced heterosexual teenage boy standing outside of a prom date’s front door with her father’s footsteps fast approaching, but he’d seen movies, and he was pretty sure he was feeling a little like an acne-faced heterosexual teenage boy standing outside of a prom date’s front door with her father’s footsteps fast approaching. His heart beat out of tune and his palms were sweaty. His mouth was cottony and dry. It was bliss.

“Are you suggesting we just...go off together?” Crowley was hopeful. He’d been the first to suggest it before Armageddon’t, and it hadn’t gone to plan back then. “As humans?”

“Why not?” Aziraphale shrugged once again. 

“Someone is trying to kill us.” 

Aziraphale thought for a moment. “Well, we won't let them. Less clever people have evaded death, my dear." 

This sounded reasonable enough to Crowley. 

“We could leave in the morning,” Crowley posited. “Put petrol in the Bently.” 

“Take the Eurotunnel to France.” 

“You can get crepes.” 

“Coffee, for you.” 

“And then we could just keep driving,” Crowley was smiling. “Drive until we run out of petrol, get some more, and do it all over again. Until we reach the ocean.” 

Aziraphale took hold of his arm and smiled. Together, they walked through Mayfair, sodden with rain and completely comfortable. 

There was something terrible, though, that they didn’t notice, and its name was Jasper Simes.


End file.
